10
PARTISAN REVIEW
C--
was moved to see me. He took me into his library, now
just a bare empty room with no carpets, very few books on the shelves,
and just enough furniture for an alcove to be used as a dining room
whilst the other end of the room was used as a study.
We plunged very quickly into explanations. I said that I had
come to inquire into the intellectual life of Bonn. C-- said that
there was almost no intellectual life left in the whole of Germany, but
that nevertheless it was important that I should talk to people and
excellent that a writer like myself should understand what was hap–
pening in Germany.
Within quite a few minutes and before any of us had men–
tioned our personal histories during the past five years, we were talk–
ing about the war. The
C--'s
wanted me to understand that many
students from Bonn had gone into the war not wishing to win, but
fighting desperately. They fought for their country, but 'they had that
monster on their backs-the Nazi Party. They knew that whether
Germany won or lost, they themselves were bound to lose.'
C--
said rather aggressively that anyone outside Germany
who maintained that it was possible for the Gem1an anti-Nazis to
prevent war, should make a serious study of the effects of govern–
ment by terror, propaganda, lies and perverted psychology in modern
scientific conditions. 'You seemed to expect us to stand up or go out
into the street and say that we opposed the war and the Party. But
what effect could that have had except our own destruction? It cer–
tainly would not have stopped the war.
It
was not
we
in Germany
but you, the democracies, the English, the French and the Americans,
who could have stopped the war at the time of the Occupation of
the Rhineland. We were all confidently expecting that you would
do so at the time. What were we to think when you let Hitler march
. ?'
m.
'Don't you think, then, that Germany is responsible for this
war?'
'Of course,'
C--
replied; 'it is absolutely clear that Hitler
started the war. There is no doubt about that at all. It is the first
fact that every German must realize. In spite of all Goebbels' propa–
ganda, every German who says otherwise is either an ignoramus or
a liar. The trouble with the Germans is that they have no experience
of political freedom. Right up to the last century they were governed
by ridiculous little princelings. Then they came under the Prussian
militarists. They have never freed themselves from servile habits of
mind. They have never governed themselves.'
